Town Council Member Melissa Engel responds to Sue Weintraub

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, September 23, 2010

Town Council Member Melissa Engel has issued a response to Sue Weintraub's accusations, pubished by The Middletown Press on Wednesday. Here is her response in full:

Enough is enough! My name is Melissa Engel. I am a registered Republican in East Hampton and a six-term elected member of the Town Council. Throughout the entire summer and into the fall I have consistently followed legal and ethical obligations with regard to litigious and personnel matters before us. I have chosen not make this any more of a media circus than it has become. However, between the poor reporting and the inflammatory submittals by Ms. Weintraub that are posted as "Breaking News," I can be silent no longer.

Ms. Weintraub has repeatedly misrepresented information on the pages of this paper, at the table of the Council and on the steps of the Town Hall. In fact Ms. Weintraub agreed that the least expensive way to separate Mr. O'Keefe was a buy-out of his contract. She said it exactly that way...until she got in front of the cameras where she expressed outrage as if she were a deer in the headlights. Not working anymore Ms. Weintraub...you've played this card too often.

In fact, to satisfy Ms. Weintraub's insistence on firing Mr. O'Keefe we had TWO lawyers substantiate that we had NO grounds for a "just cause" removal. Ms. Weintraub had that information. Each attorney warned that an attempt at a "just cause" removal could cost the Town more money in lawsuits than a contract buy-out. Your tax dollars don't matter when there is an opportunity to grandstand.

Fact: no-one in the history of East Hampton has caused the Town more legal expenses than Sue Weintraub and the Chatham Party with repeated FOI requests and a $

There have NEVER been secret or illegal meetings as she suggests. Ms. Weintraub chooses to be a one-woman show on a mission to malign the genuine efforts of the whole to promote her personal agenda regardless of validity or common purpose.

Nor has there been a "cover-up" as Ms. Weintraub continually suggests. We took complaints against the Town Manager very seriously and acted swiftly and appropriately to have them investigated. Those efforts were thwarted by the complainants themselves who refused to participate in the process, and by their lawyer Atty. Leon Rosenblatt (who also represents Matt Reimondo) who wrote to us to say the complaints were really just "concerns." Suddenly they were merely concerns?

The state's attorney's office has been investigating the complaints since June and apparently has already dismissed two as irrelevant. Are you aware that the state's attorney's office was only contacted when Matt Reimondo, upon being notified of O'Keefe's plan to eliminate the position of chief, immediately instructed Sgt. Garrit Kelly to contact them. Who is retaliating against whom? Interestingly, they have yet to make an arrest OR clear O'Keefe's name. We ALL wonder why?

As the smear campaign to discredit Mr. O'Keefe rolled on and on, his effectiveness as a leader was stymied. I asked to meet with him on Sept. 4 (no-one else was present) about resigning in the best interest of our community. He agreed. There is NO single position that should come before the well-being of our community. There certainly was no laughter, as Ms. Weintraub reports.

Sue Weintraub did not force us to release O'Keefe's severance package or its terms - in fact I announced the costs at the meeting Sept. 10. The document became available when it was fully signed and received by the town on Monday, Sept. 13, and it was available from our HR department! Who are you kidding, Ms. Weintraub?

There is nothing illegal about the restructuring of the police department. It is well within the rights of this community to restructure any department in an effort to save money and improve effectiveness. Our attorneys have confirmed that Ordinance No. 109 can legally be changed and that we are doing it correctly. Ms. Weintraub may disagree with the restructuring but erroneous claims of illegality are simply a smoke screen to distract from the issue.

It is also the public's right to have the correct information, which is why I am releasing this document. Don't stand behind the tenets of democracy, Ms. Weintraub, when your supporters intimidate and threaten our residents - preventing them from participating in a public forum! Never before has our public been afraid to speak. Why you are so set on silencing them.